Story Submission Guidelines

We Want to Hear Your True Stories!

Did someone help restore your faith in humanity? Save your life? Help someone you know? Go out of their way to make your life easier? Tell us about it!

How To Submit Your Story:

Read all of these guidelines!

Read some of the stories already published here on HeroicStories.org.

The best examples of what we’re looking for is what we’ve been publishing.

Tell a story!

Stories have one theme, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. How will you inspire others to take a similar action?

Write about 500 words.

All stories publish between 400 and 500 words. If your story is too long, we’ll return it and ask you to shorten it; if it’s too short we’ll ask you to lengthen it. Up to around 625 words, we’ll edit it ourselves.

Include your name and location.

Be sure to include the state/province and country where you currently live. Please also include your telephone number in case we have any last-minute questions.

Also Remember:

Don’t Preach. We don’t accept stories that push specific religious faiths or ideologies. Our mission is to show that people are good.

Don’t use the word “hero”. Your story should make the reason you think of the person as a “hero” clear.

Additional guidelines:

Avoid being the hero in the story. Stories where the author is the hero are often interpreted as being self-promotional, “what a great person I am!” kind of stories. The underlying message is lost and these types of stories are significantly less popular. If self-promotion not your intent consider rewriting it from the point of view of an observer.

By sending us a story, you warrant (promise) that:

You wrote the story yourself

Your story is true, and you know the facts first-hand

There is no legal reason you cannot submit your story to us for publication

It doesn’t defame any person or impinge on the rights of others

If you claim any copyright on your story, by submitting it to us you grant us the non-exclusive, royalty-free right to publish it in any form and in any medium, electronic or print, and/or license others to do so.

In exchange, we warrant that we will:

Review your submission and, if it is accepted, edit it for publication (we reserve the right to edit for publication, including length, clarity and flow. While we encourage stories that you witness, we may also change it from a first person account, if you were the “hero”, to third person, which is more readily accepted by readers.)

Include your name as the author and the state where you live when it is published unless you specifically ask that it not be included.

We will not publish your email address with your story (but we will include a URL for your web page if you specifically ask).

Getting your story to us:

It’s a two step process:

Read and follow the guidelines above again. Following the guidelines will make our lives easier, and make it more likely that your story will be published.

Email your story to submit<at>heroicstories.org (replace the <at> with @).

We’ll take it from there. Depending on the volume of submissions we may not be able to respond to every story, however if we use your story you will hear from us.

You don’t have to be a polished writer. Our editors will improve your story if it needs it.

Thanks for your submission! We appreciate your time and effort, and look forward to reading your heroic story.

Note: HeroicStories aims to be a place of positive energy in what sometimes feels like an increasingly negative world. Our goal is to highlight good things done by good people that make the world a better place.

To that end your comments are not only welcome but encouraged. However, comments that simply find fault or otherwise complain about some aspect of a story will not be published. There's simply no need to find fault here - there are plenty of places on the internet for those discussions if you really feel the need to go negative.